TV previews.

Smaller Than Life

Fox Desperately Seeking Ratings With Made-for-tv Portrait Of Madonna

November 28, 1994|By Ken Parish Perkins, Tribune Television Critic.

"Madonna: Innocence Lost"

7 p.m. Tuesday, Fox-Ch. 32

Take a kid from Bay City, Mich., and follow her from singing in New York City dance clubs through the beginnings of a stormy career that, despite setbacks and predatory promiscuity, makes her the darling of the MTV Music Awards.

It ought to be a sure-fire formula for a made-for-TV movie, even more so when the title tells it all: "Madonna: Innocence Lost."

Madonna's life, at least up to the release of her breakthrough "Like a Virgin" album in 1984, has been stuffed into a two-hour movie so pathetic that the only hope is that someone has the sense to kill this thing before it airs.

But what can you expect when the writer of "Madonna" (7 p.m. Tuesday, Fox-Ch. 32) is Michael Murray, who scripted the trashy "Honor Thy Father & Mother: The True Story of the Menendez Murders," and the director is Bradford May, who gave us the dreadful "Amy Fisher: My Story"?

"Innocence Lost," I assume, is considered a step up for all those involved.

They would include the TV Madonna, the virtually unknown Terumi Matthews, whose press materials list "Young Indiana Jones" and the soap "Loving" as credits. She is said to have been plucked from hundreds of hopefuls for the Madonna role.

Matthews doesn't look like Madonna or sound like her; nor is she very convincing acting like her, which makes one wonder who showed up for the auditions. Her numerous seductions aren't all that convincing either. And this being network television, we're left only to take the word of the men who gush over her "perfect body," because we never really see it. (There's one quick shot of her in bikini briefs standing in a mirror.)

Some feminists have praised Madonna's take-control style of running her career. But the writer of "Innocence Lost" suggests that the singer, in a cold, manipulative way, slept with men and a few women, too, to get pretty much everything: lodging, food, exposure, record contracts, band members, acceptance. In one scene, she's making out with a 16-year-old boy, although it's not clear what he could do for her other than sexual satisfaction.

After dropping another lover who helped her get exposure in his band, she tells him: "If this makes me a bitch, then I'm sorry."

Dean Stockwell ("Quantum Leap") plays her sensitive, supportive father, Tony Ciccone, as if he's some kind of zombie. Wendie Malick ("Dream On") is Madonna's first manager, a woman credited with crafting the singer's boy-toy image. Later she, too, is dumped by a restless Madonna, who skips out when someone else says they can book her in larger venues.

Described as a blend of fiction and speculative journalism (which means little of it can be trusted), "Innocence Lost" tries to tell viewers something we don't already know: that before Madonna was Madonna, she once slept on a park bench in Manhattan and posed nude for a photography class (she slept with the instructor to get three times the salary of other photography models). Haven't we heard that somewhere before?

In the end, none of it is interesting, and the dialogue often sounds like a comedy sketch parody. The major problem with this farce is apparent by the climax, when Madonna is sobbing alone in the dressing room at the MTV Music Awards, asking why her friends have left her with nothing but loads of money and fame.

You're supposed to care about her at this point-but your first inclination might be to crack up laughing. The second will be to kick yourself for wasting two hours.

- Sitting in a wheelchair, comedian Chris Fonseca is telling an audience that as a disabled person he doesn't believe the world owes him a living. "But," he says, "a CD player would be nice." I've never before found Fonseca, who has cerebral palsy, all that funny-take away the disability as a gimmick and he wouldn't get a minute of TV time.

But in the unusual comedy special "Look Who's Laughing" (10 p.m. Monday, WTTW-Ch. 11), featuring six comedians with disabilities, Fonseca delivers some funny lines. In fact, many of the comics do, and part of the reason is that the show is cleverly structured.

Viewers don't see the entire routines-just edited snippets, which means we get their funniest bits. They say a few lines and are seen later in empty comedy clubs talking about why they do what they do.

That makes "Look Who's Laughing" both funny and poignant: All the comedians are committed to making people laugh while demystifying their disabilities.

Created and produced by Randy Johnson with a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, "Look Who's Laughing" also features Kathy Buckley (hearing impaired), Brett Leake (muscular dystrophy), Alex Valdez (blind), J.D. England (paraplegic) and Geri Jewell (cerebral palsy), who appeared on the sitcom "Facts of Life."